Roxana remembers a Persian tradition her family has held since before she was born in Orange County, California. She first remembers performing this folklore when she was about four years old, as taught tao her by her mother.

Roxana recalls, “If I’m going on a long trip, while I’m walking out the door, my Mom will make me walk under the Koran. It’s so my voyage is blessed. The ironic thing is we’d be going somewhere like… Vegas. The most sinful place in the world. But I’d have to walk under the Koran. It doesn’t make sense [laughs].”

When asked what she thinks about this piece of folklore, Roxana replied, “It’s ironic because we don’t practice anything else that’s Islamic. And we’re always going to places like Vegas to gamble, and drink, and there’s prostitution exposed to me at a young age, but yet we have to walk under the Koran to get there. It’s something that was engrained in [my mother] as a child so she can’t stop doing it. But then I have to be exposed to it because of that, and I don’t really care for it.”

I, on the other hand, have a different opinion of this folklore performance. I believe the action of walking under a holy object, like the Koran, for safety and wellbeing on a journey is a comforting act, one that shows how much your family loves you and hopes that good things will fall upon you while you’re away from home. I don’t think that it should matter if you’re going somewhere a bit “sinful,” like Las Vegas. It’s the sentiment of hoping your loved ones are safe and happy that would matter to me, not so much whether or not I was specifically following the Koran’s teachings.